Not very credible, if you check this site:"The English colonists ate a variety of shellfish, including lobster, but they preferred their traditional, grain-based fare. Shellfish might have been an especially important staple of the colonist's diet before the English grain-based foods were plentiful."http://www.es.umb.edu/faculty/edg/files/bhms/bh...The main problem seems to have been not so much one of taste but preservation in a time when there were no cooling facilities...

If you are ordered to break the claw of a crab or a lobster, clap it between the sides of the dining-room door between the hinges. Thus you can do it gradually without mashing the meat; which is often the fate of the street-door key, or the pestle.---Directions to Servants. Jonathan Swift, 1745.